Prospects faded over the weekend for a bill that would legalise abortion in Argentina, when an opposition senator said she had changed her mind and would vote against the measure when it is brought to the floor on Wednesday. The proposal, which would expand abortion rights beyond current laws that allow the procedure only in cases of rape or when the mother’s health is at risk, passed the lower house last month by 129 votes to 125.

Since then religious activists, particularly in rural parts of the country, have pushed back against the measure, which is backed by feminists and rights groups galvanised in recent years by efforts to stop violence against women. The bill would make Argentina the third country in Latin American to broadly legalise abortion, after Uruguay and Cuba.

SAO PAULO — Brazil’s supreme court is considering decriminalizing abortion through the 12th week of pregnancy, stoking activists' hopes that the country could follow other Latin American nations in loosening abortion restrictions.

Hearings on the issue, which began Friday and continued on Monday, included testimony from dozens of doctors, specialists and religious leaders. Tensions flared in the days leading up to the hearings, with activists on both sides speaking out. Outside the supreme court on Friday, women donned red robes resembling those worn on the hit TV show, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” in favor of decriminalization. Meanwhile, #AbortionisaCrime trended on Twitter, and churches sounded their bells in protest.

Dozens of women march in silence through a rainy cityscape. Heads bowed, dressed in red cloaks and white bonnets, it looks like a scene from Gilead, the theocratic patriarchy Margaret Atwood created in dystopian 1985 novel The Handmaid's Tale.

But this is Buenos Aires. It is Wednesday, and the women involved are calling for abortion to be decriminalised in a country where complications arising from illegal abortion are a leading cause of maternal death.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Dozens of demonstrators wearing red cloaks and white bonnets like the characters from the novel-turned-TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale” demonstrated Wednesday in Argentina in favor of legalizing abortion.

The demonstrators marched in silence with their heads bowed through the streets of the Argentine capital until they reached the Congress building. Under a heavy rain, one of them read a letter by “Handmaid’s Tale” author Margaret Atwood, who supports the effort led by Argentine feminist groups.

Argentina: The Handmaid's Tale Author Backs Abortion Rights
Margaret Atwood urged VP Gabriela Michetti, a staunch detractor of legalizing abortion, to ask herself if she wants to live in a country where "half the population is enslaved."

Published 13 July 2018

Activists in Argentina who are are fighting for access to legal, safe and free abortions up to the 14th week of pregnancy have gained a new international ally: Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, most popular for her TV-series-adapted novel The Handmaid's Tale.

In a recent letter to local newspaper UNO Santa Fe, Atwood shared her opinion on the comments made by Argentina’s Vice President and president of the Senate Gabriela Michetti regarding Atwood’s tweets, which urged the Senate to uphold women’s rights and support the legalization of abortion.

Author Margaret Atwood tells Argentina's VP: 'Give women the right to choose abortion'
Atwood addressed Gabriella Michetti following accusations last week that the vice-president was trying to hinder a vote in the Senate on the bill to decriminalise elective abortion.

June 26, 2018

Beloved Canadian writer Margaret Atwood has expressed her support for the ongoing campaign in Argentina to decriminalise elective abortion, with a personal message for Vice-President Gabriela Michetti.

“Vicepresident of Argentina @gabimichetti: don’t look away from the thousands of deaths every year from ilegal abortions. Give argentinian women the right to choose!”, Atwood wrote on Twitter, citing the hashtags of the #NiUnaMenos movement and those in favour of abortion like #AbortoLegalYa #QueElAbortoSeaLey and #AbortoEnSenadoYa.

Finally, a woman’s death at the hands of an old madness did not mean nothing

Van Badham
Wed 30 May 2018

The photograph from the Irish referendum that brought me undone was of white-haired men in the street holding a yellow banner. It read “Grandfathers for Yes”. It came across my phone as I traversed Melbourne in the 86 tram only a couple of days before the vote, like a lobbed bomb of hope and love, relief and change. I sobbed aloud.

It struck with specific weight because there’d been another photo circulating a week earlier of Irish men the same age in a sadly more familiar scenario. “Vote NO” read their own pink signs, “Support women, protect babies, save lives.” That one had left me not in hot tears but a cold rage.